US cities fear protests may fuel new wave of virus outbreaks
LOS ANGELES — The massive protests sweeping across U.S. cities following the police killing of a handcuffed black man last week in Minnesota have elevated fears of a new surge in cases of the coronavirus.
Images showing thousands of screaming, unmasked protesters have sent shudders through the health community, which worries its calls for social distancing during the demonstrations are unlikely to be heard.
Leaders appealing for calm in places where crowds smashed storefronts and destroyed police cars in recent nights also have been handing out masks and warning protesters they were putting themselves at risk.
But many seemed undeterred.
“It’s not OK that in the middle of a pandemic we have to be out here risking our lives,” Spence Ingram said Friday after marching with other protesters to the state Capitol in Atlanta. “But I have to protest for my life and fight for my life all the time.”
Ingram, 25, who was wearing a mask, said she has asthma and was worried about contracting the virus. But she said as a black woman, she always felt that her life was under threat from police and she needed to protest that.
The demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into his neck, are coming as many cities were beginning to relax stayat-home orders.
That’s especially worrisome for health experts who fear that silent carriers of the virus who have no symptoms could unwittingly infect others at gatherings with people packed together and cheering and jeering without masks.
“Whether they’re fired up or not, that doesn’t prevent them from getting the virus,” said Bradley Pollock, chairman of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Images from many demonstrations show most protesters have been wearing masks, but that doesn’t guarantee protection from the coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends cloth masks because they can make it more difficult for infected people to spread the virus — but they are not designed to protect the person wearing the mask from getting the virus.
The U.S. has been worst hit by the coronavirus outbreak, approaching 1.8 million cases and over 103,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
But it wasn’t just protesters at risk. Images showed unmasked officers standing alongside demonstrators. In Atlanta, police Chief Erika Shields waded into a crowd without a mask Friday while she listened to people air frustrations.
When Los Angeles officials announced last week that the city was relaxing stay-at-home orders and reopening stores, they also said political protests could resume but with a cap of 100 people.
Several hundred people showed up for a protest organized by Black Lives Matter-LA. Most wore masks, but many did not observe a buffer zone.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Friday that was an ongoing concern.
“Show respect for each other by putting on that face covering so that your respiratory droplets aren’t unintentionally getting into somebody else’s mouth, nose or eyes,” she said.
Meanwhile, the European Union on Saturday urged President Donald Trump to rethink his decision to terminate the U.S. relationship with the World Health Organization as spiking infection rates in India and elsewhere reinforced that the pandemic is far from contained.
Trump on Friday charged that the WHO didn’t respond adequately to the pandemic and accused the U.N. agency of being under China’s “total control.” The U.S. is the largest source of financial support for the WHO, and its exit is expected to significantly weaken the organization.
“The WHO needs to continue being able to lead the international response to pandemics, current and future,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.